Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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In almost 88 years on this planet, Dolores Penrod has often been a rebel, but never without a cause. Penrod may be best known in eastern New Mexico for founding the Community Services Center in Portales in 1965, then serving as its executive director until her retirement in 1999. She credits her deep roots in social work to her long line of German Lutheran ancestors who were protesters before they came to the United States more than 2 1/2 centuries ago. "My family was...
When grief or anger or despair creeps in, I turn to baking. So it was that I arose at dawn on Tuesday and laid upon my kitchen counter four sticks of butter, three eggs, and a bag of chocolate chips. Like most of us in eastern New Mexico, my head was still reeling with the news from the Monday evening, snippets of information that arrived via text messages, phone calls, and Facebook posts after a young gunman tore apart a space many of us hold sacred: a public library. By...
Every organization — if it is lucky — has at least one go-to person, the individual who knows where the missing keys are likely to be found, who to call when crisis strikes, where the have-to-have-it notebook is. For the past eight years, in the Roosevelt County Extension office, that person has been Sherri Best. As you read this, Sherri should be about halfway through her last Roosevelt County Fair as administrative secretary for the local extension office. I was one of doz...
Even without benefit of a calendar, a recent slow trip up NM 206 following a food truck painted with a four-foot tall picture of a glistening candy apple was proof-positive: Fair season has arrived in eastern New Mexico. Curry County kicked off festivities on Tuesday for a five-day run in Clovis. Roosevelt County will follow suit this Tuesday through Aug. 26, with entry day slated for Monday at the fairgrounds north of Portales. In the 110 or so years since Roosevelt County...
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” is a phrase long-associated with the United States Postal Service. But if you ask anyone who receives electricity from a rural cooperative, I think most of us would agree that our linemen are the ones who best live that motto, storm after storm, outage after outage. Only we’d need to tuck in a few more qualifiers like, “nor sandstorms nor blizzar...
One of my favorite photographs was taken 70 years ago this summer. In the 1947 black-and-white print, J.G. “Spud” Greaves is standing under the awning of the Portales newspaper office, where he was editor of the Portales Valley News and later the Portales Daily News for years. Spud’s right arm is extended so his hand can catch the rain, and his face radiates the joy that we desert-dwellers feel when life-giving liquid gold falls from the heavens. In eastern New Mexico, rain...
By the time Samantha Bartl’s Portales High School classmates begin their junior year on Aug. 11, she will be more than 5,000 miles away, exploring the Scandinavian country that gave the world Hans Christian Andersen and his magical fairy tales. Samantha, 16, who spent much of her summer as a lifeguard at the Portales City Pool, will be diving into a fairy tale of her own as she flies to Copenhagen, Denmark, on Aug. 5 to begin a year as a Rotary youth exchange student. It w...
If someone presses a cup of coffee into your hands this weekend, stops by your business with complimentary doughnuts, or washes your car but flat-out refuses any money for it, you may have experienced a “We Love Portales” moment. Today, Friday, and Saturday, members of local churches involved in the Roosevelt County Ministerial Alliance will be engaged in a variety of projects all designed to give back to the community, according to Don Thomas, president of the Alliance and...
Two Portales High School students with a passion for the performing arts have spent many of their waking hours in Lubbock this summer, honing their acting skills in preparation for a musical that opened last weekend across the state line. Liam Hurley and Mackenzie Privett are both rising seniors at PHS. They hope that eastern New Mexico theater-goers will make the drive they’ve practically memorized to see the Moonlight Children’s Theater production of “Shrek the Music...
I didn’t know until last month that the figure we always called “the tall Texan” actually had a name. It turns out that West Texas’ tallest cowboy, the 47-footer who towers over Canyon on the south side of U.S. 60, is named Tex Randall. On June 24, Tex (who is even older than me) was rewarded with a brand spanking new “Official Texas Historical Marker.” Tex was still young and fresh back when I first met him, clad in real denim jeans and offering travelers a friendly we...
Every six weeks or so — or anytime he talk someone into joining him — Greg Senn straps on and wriggles into about 75 pounds of gear, “staggers over” to a body of water, and falls in. On purpose. He claims it is “an awful lot of fun.” A professor of art at Eastern New Mexico University, Senn is best known for his sculpting and jewelry-making classes. But for the last 16 years, he has regularly pursued a passion that takes him to a whole new world — diving with scuba gear. I...
Even if she hadn’t been born with auburn hair that earned her the lifelong nickname of “Red,” Lela Jo Halliday would have been considered a colorful character. Barely five months since her death, her presence will loom large on July 1 in Elida when that community gathers for one of its every-five-years school reunions and an early celebration of Independence Day. Described by many as “a one-of-a-kind,” Red Halliday was practically synonymous with her hometown. “I always thin...
On summer weekends when many families are gathering up gear for soccer or baseball, a number of locals hitch up trailers, load horses, and round up saddles, halters, bridles, and trail patterns to participate in horse clubs that are active in our area. One of those clubs — the All Breed Horse Show Association — conducted a trail ride for its members Saturday, followed by a chuckwagon meal in a beautiful pasture setting west of Portales. “The trail ride / chuck wagon event...
Like colorful all-weather Easter eggs, painted rocks have been springing up all over eastern New Mexico and west Texas. We can thank three sisters who decided to jump head-first into a fad that seems to be stretching from coast to coast. The concept is simple: "Paint, hide, find, rehide," Jana Dodd explains. "It's all about spreading smiles in your community, one rock at a time." The three "Foster sisters" grew up spending summers in Portales with their grandparents, George...
DORA — For three decades of Dora students in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, "store day" was a highlight of the school week. Those were the Friday afternoons when elementary students made the 100-yard trek for teacher-supervised shopping sprees at the Dora Grocery, owned and operated by Helen and Opal Jones. My store days started in the late '60s. I and most of my classmates came to school each Friday clutching a precious dime. A handful of the highly envied had quarters. Even a...
If you’re a pet lover in eastern New Mexico, chances are good you’ve heard of Cindy’s Hope for Precious Paws and/or encountered the two women behind it, Cindy Clayton and Wendy Turner. These two big-hearted ladies are the driving force behind a cause they’d both love to see come to an end: rescuing and rehoming the endless supply of abandoned cats, dogs, kittens, and puppies in our area. Clayton and Turner are self-pronounced lifelong animal lovers. Their passion for pet res...
If you happen upon a small group of bleary-eyed individuals sporting binoculars and toting well-worn bird identification guides in Curry County on Saturday, mark it down in your own rare-sighting book. You will have encountered one of the hundreds of teams who will be out in more than 150 countries around the world participating in a Global Big Day, an attempt to see how many of the earth’s 10,000 species of birds can be identified during a 24-hour period. Albuquerque r...
I discovered some years ago that I have an unusual knack for giving away other people’s money. Not only is it easy to do, it is highly satisfying. That is only one of the reasons I look forward to the annual scholarship and awards ceremony at Eastern New Mexico University. This year’s version happened Tuesday, and 418 students left the Campus Union Ballroom with a total of $376,000 worth of scholarships. I started attending this event about 20 years ago when my Uncle Jack Wil...
I’ve grown a lot of gardens in my life, harvested some top-notch tomatoes, provided asparagus to the masses, but when it comes to flowers — for some unknown reason — my green thumb withers to a shriveled gray. It’s not for lack of trying. I have wasted a small fortune in nursery plants. I have collected promising “anybody can grow these” clippings from friends. Maybe “anybody” can grow them, but I am living proof that not “everybody” can. In a charitable act of faith, I onc...
Vern Witten says he didn't select the part of Simon the Zealot when First United Methodist Church of Portales first performed "The Living Last Supper" in 1998 in the sanctuary of the old church. Then-director Karyl Lyne nabbed him for the role, telling him she had "no doubt" it was the right fit. After reading the part, Witten said he concurred. Nineteen years later, Witten has been Simon the Zealot in all nine of FUMC's presentations of the play, and he's scheduled to assume...
A few years ago I was in a restaurant in Lubbock late one morning when a flood of customers came in all splattered in a rainbow of colors, a spectrum that coated every visible inch of their clothing and skin. And they were so happy. That was my introduction to the concept of the “color run,” a usually for-a-good-cause, always-for-a-good-time event where participants pay an entry fee before they run (or walk, hop, skip, saunter …you get the idea) a set distance while perio...
If you don’t already own running shoes, this would be a good time to invest in a pair because you will need them this weekend to keep up with the overflowing calendar of activities slated for the High Plains. Here is a sampling of what’s in store. • The 67th Annual Floyd Lions Country Jamboree kicks off this evening in the Floyd School gymnasium, with a new feature: the welcome addition of a space for those who want to get up and dance to the country music this event provi...
The Special Hearts Prom held last weekend at the Clovis Civic Center was inspired in part by a young man who had a special heart of his own. His mother said he would have had one heck of a good time had he been there. Daniel Goyne was born in Portales in 1982 with a congenital heart disease. He was less than a week old when he had the first of many surgeries, his mother Ronda Goyne said. Given a life expectancy of 15 years, Daniel grew up in special education classrooms in...
Two good things happened this week. I spotted a blooming Easter daisy and, while walking in a pink chalky sunrise, I heard prairie chickens. Spring on the High Plains is not without its challenges — tumbleweeds, sandstorms, and the annual invasion of Miller moths, to name a few. We have it easier than our pioneer ancestors. We have insulated walls and storm windows. The science of meteorology has advanced to the point where we know almost the moment the wind will hit and how h...
For more than 70 years, Eunice Schumpert opened her Portales home and her generous heart to hundreds of local youth for weekly piano and voice lessons in a meticulous living room where music was the medium for a message that went well beyond sharps and flats. Mrs. Schumpert (it was very hard to call her Eunice) died Saturday at the age of 95 after what must have been one of the longest music educator careers on record (in late 2015 she told me, almost apologetically, that she...
